Journeys in the heart and mind of the not-so-typical Southern Male

May. 10th, 2010

So the idiots who owned the house before us put rocks in the front bed and generally neglected the flower beds in every way possible. It's been a long project rehabbing these beds to the point where we might actually be able to plant flowers in them. To add to that, there was a fairly serious water drainage issue caused by the main downspout for the front of the house coming down in that bed. So every time we had a rain storm, it would flood the entire front bed and sidewalk.

To fix that, we rerouted the downspout along the front slab and out the side. We did that a few weeks ago, and it mostly held up to the 4 inches of rain we got out of the same storm that drowned Nashville. But the front bed was still flooding. Not nearly as badly, but still flooding due to it being a low lying area.

So we raised the beds up between six and nine inches depending on where in the bed you are. This involved hauling 1.5 tons - yes, literally - of topsoil and applying it. Then we hauled a half-ton of mulch to apply on top. It was a hell of a lot of work, but the results speak for themselves...

We were going to try for flowers on Sunday, but we were both way too sore, so we may do those this weekend. After that, the next project is to remove those overgrown bushes on the right in picture #1 to make way for a small pond and water fountain. Either way, I wanna have all this shit done by the end of May, before it gets too hot to work outside.